Lakewood Township, New Jersey

Lakewood Township is a township in Ocean County, New Jersey. The area was settled after 1750 by European sawmill workers, and Joseph W. Brick founded the Bergen Iron Works in the area in 1833; the town was named Bricksburg in 1865 before being renamed to Lakewood in 1880 to honor its location near lakes and pine forests, and to give the town a more attractive name. It was incorporated on 23 March 1892 from portions of Brick Township, while portions of Howell Township were annexed in 1929. During the 1890s, Lakewood was a resort for the rich and famous, and its hotel business remained strong in the 1920s and 1950s. However, the hotel industry went into decline during the 1960s, and much of the woods and cranberry bogs were replaced by large housing developments. From 2000 to 2010, Lakewood had a sharp increase in population due to increases in the town's Jewish and Latino communities, and Lakewood became a hub of Orthodox Judaism - it became home to one of the largest yeshivas in the world, Beth Medrash Govoha (with 6,500 students). In 2017, Lakewood had a population of 102,682 people, with more than half of them being Orthodox Jews; they became a powerful voting bloc.